Just in this moment I choose to be totally present, to “feel” my body- to step out of my head and all the thoughts that make me crazy and suffering drama, fear, and suffering…

Just for this one moment I take a deep breath and feel my body relax and the tenseness leave as I release the air….

And now another moment…I am faced with again the choice to breath in the moment, and to engage in the moment…

And again, I choose to step out of the chatter of my mind and listen to my breath, and feel it move through my nostrils….

Moment by moment I make it through another day, day by day I make it through another week, week by week I make it through another month, and then a year and then two…. this is one part of recovery…. this is the begining of recovery to live without picking up…

This morning I woke up thinking about traditional treatment centers where the addict stays and learns about addiction, and spends time with other addicts, has the weekly visiting time with their family if the family is involved. Then I thought about the family setting and the addict. Big thoughts about how many different problems arise within the families. Wouldn’t it be great to actually spend time working through some of those issues in real life. The family issues that occur and cause many addicts to relapse because of not having the tools to handle those issues between family members.

At the Sun Salutation House we spend more time and energy on each individual client, than a traditional treatment center is capable of doing. This is one of the perks of a small private center, we individualize our program to meet each client and to focus on their individual needs, which is never the same for every client! Each and every family is uniquely different. Our life coaches can go into the family settings to observe and coach clients and their families in communicating, and resolving issues that may seem unresolvable.

This family setting is a great place for our clients to receive support, if in fact it is intact and some of these issues are resolved. If the issues are not resolved, it doesn’t matter how many family meetings the family attends while the client is in treatment, or how much the family understands about addiction, there will remain a wall of anger and mistrust. This wall will eventually become a trigger to the addict as well as the family members. The trigger I speak about is that issue lying dormant waiting for the moment that someone does something or says something that disturbs it….and there it is at the forefront causing all sorts of emotional flareup. Anger is typical. Frustrations, and fears can show up and erupt in volatile ways to cause havoc on a personal level to any of the family members, and all the work done in treatment can fly out the window without notice or preparation.

We are small enough to work with each client and there family members to create changes that are not normally a part of traditional treatment programs. Call us and find out how we can support your family is healing from the effects that addiction has caused in your life and within your family. 608-295-2520

Trying to resolve my own hurt feelings, yet running into the tangled web of expectations. I feel inside I am screaming for you to hear me, for you to make space for me. What comes out is this stone wall of righteousness, this place where you defend your actions, and your rights.
I hurt even more, as though salt is being poured in the wound.
Why, I ask myself do I bother with it all. Some place in me knows its all just a story from my ego to yours. I watch my thoughts, and challenge them, and know they are simply my ego attempting to be “right” as well.
Today, I need to step away. I need to put space between you and I. I need to drop my story today.
I can believe that it is not possible for you to understand.
If a person can not understand, then how can they ever realize the injuries caused by their actions? This I can allow my self to believe and now I want to go play in the dirt and plant something wonderful!

Like this:

Every time I stop and reminisce on our time together, I wind up smiling. I have learned so much through you. You may believe that I think it was a mistake, I do not. I know better than to think any of this life is a mistake. I embrace it all. The hurtful, the pain, the joys, the laughter, the non-mistakes, accidents…all of it is so beautiful!

I love you for being you, with all of what you may think of as blunders, or mistakes, they are not in my mind. They happen for a reason, I am honored that you showed up in my life and acted out the part that I needed you to act out so that I could learn and grow and become more of my own being. I send good wishes, good energy your way, and only think good loving thoughts of you, for you, for who you were for me!

Oh come on, don’t get to frightened and run off too quickly here. I know….it is scary to take a leap of faith, to jump into our skin fully committed to changing what it is we are so awfully comfortable with! Yeah yeah, Cheryl, I hate my life, but I can not fathom changing it….it is just way to scary! I hear this so much I want to laugh! Complaints and frustrations and spinning round and round in a life that is at its core basically unfulfillable and miserable…but why bother to change it right? I mean after all, everyone I know is just as miserable with their lives…life is like that!

Slam the breaks on, come to a screeching halt right there! It may appear that everyones life is just as miserable as yours, but I promise you that that is simply NOT true! It might be that everyone you hang with has a similiar mindset as your own, it may be the common piece that keeps you all so awfully comfortable with one another, thus you cling tightly to one another, proving that it is “normal” to enjoy complaining, airing small little bullshit thoughts, and common misery together…but its just not true that “everyone life is like this”.

I will be starting up another FEARLESS LIVING class and I challenge you to jump in with others who are really tired of unauthentic misery…. and ready to take a leap of faith and honestly ready to risk being AUTHENTICALLY themselves!!!! Yeah, there is a distinct freedom in being yourself! Even better than all that has been said, doing it in a group of people who know that there is more to life than misery and can support each other in change is really awesome and powerful!

Email me today and get on my “FABULOUSLY AWESOMELY AWESOME” list, and I will send you all the information on upcoming classes and groups that will provoke you into engaging and living a life you really want instead of settling for the life you got!

Such a great word, carries so many thoughts ideals, and feelings in just this one word. I know it does with me, some days I just want to laugh at it, other days such as this particular one, I want to delve into it deeper and look at it. Toying with words can be fun for me some days.

There are in my opinion, many levels to honesty. Honesty in words and actions, and yet honesty in thought. today I am thinking about the honesty in thought. For addicts, I do believe that there has to come a time when an addict must go into the realm of thought in order to farther their growth with their sobriety, and their relationships. It is not just the addict who could benefit from deeper inspection though.

Today I am looking at the thinking realm, where we have thoughts that we either act on or we do not. More specifically, the dishonest thought that leads us back into the addictive personality for the addict, and for the normal type of human being, leads us into disconnect with others and with our true selves.

And lets go to the place of even more specificity, the thoughts that create a sense of hiding, a sense of sneaking around, a sense of keeping something secret. It does not matter which tale we tell ourselves as to why this is important to keep it secret from another…for now it just is.

The moment we realize we are sneaking around is the moment we realize we are being dishonest with either ourselves or another… ahhhh how simple is that.

If we wish to become honest human beings, we need to stop being dishonest and hiding our true selves from others!

Where are you being dishonest and sneaking around and making up all sorts of stories as to why this is better than being honest? What would happen just for today if you were to challenge yourself to experience what one day of absolute honesty would be like for you?

I invite you to try being honest just for a day, find out what your results are, and post back here and let us know what it is like for you!

Scenario: Asking one person out on a date, when in truth there is no attraction to this person. There is however an attraction to another who is unavailable.

One must have a basic understanding of the twelve step program and the model of addictive personality to truly gain from this article or my views here in this post. Craig Nikkon has written books that are fabulous and short for understanding the addictive personality model, and the Big Book of Alcoholics Anyomous can be found online very easily.

I like to integrate these two models as they flow so well together. The addictive personality outlines the basic problem while the big book’s twelve steps shows one how make changes to heal the problems within and create a deep personal change in ones life.

As stated in the addictive personality model, addiction is basically having a relationship and intimacy with an object, void of human in interaction. This relationship is in fact a secret,, a hiding of oneself from others. I relate to it as a withdrawal from life vs. going out word towards life. The object being alcohol, substances, porno, etc… One begins to have an intimate relationship with an object instead of a human being.

Craig Nikkon goes farther with this relationship based on manipulation vs. negotiation. With a human being, there is a back and forth, give and take interaction, where with an object, it is all a one sided affair, the addict uses an object to gain a specific feeling from it.

Okay so heres the situation that happened. See if you can relate this scenario to your own life, and see how the addictive personality and relapse is in play throughout the scenario and then how to heal this entire situation of personal betrayal through the twelve steps.

Bob has been attracted to Susan for awhile, but Susan is in a relationship with Harry. Bob has recently been involved with a married woman, and that relationship did not work out. He is not drinking, and still working out the issues from the previous relationship. He is feeling lonely, confuse, and angry. Anyway, here comes Susan, and Rhonda.

Now Rhonda is a nice enough woman, who crossed paths with our Bob, and found him attractive, and wanted to date him. She is the pursuer in this scenario. Bob is not really attracted to her, he has kissed her and doesn’t really like the way she kisses, and he thinks and fantasizes about Susan while he is with Rhonda. A date gets set up and Bob becomes nervous, begins believing they will have intimacy on this date.

The date begins, and is set in a bar. Bob shows up and right away explains that he drinks on occassion, even though he is in a program. She claims hey, whatever your alright with! He orders drinks for himself, and the away he goes. He believes his relapse happens then at that moment.

I believe it happened perhaps months ago in his relationship with the married woman, if he had any sobriety at all. Sobriety is not just the not using the original substance, it is the stepping away from the addictive personality all together and healing relationships with others and with the God of your understanding.

Here we go, lets pick out where things went wrong.

Bob was dishonest is this entire scenario. He in fact had full knowledge that he was not attracted to Rhonda, but did not reveal this to Rhonda. He hid from her his true self. Thus he was pretending to be or feel something other than what was true for him.

His soul knows this, her soul picks up vibes, both are betrayed on a deep spiritual level.

Manipulation occurs here as well, when Bob manipulates the situation in secret, getting his needs met for intimacy-the intimacy he really wanted from Susan. Thus he uses Rhonda like an object to get his needs met. Problem again, this is a lie for both him, and Rhonda, and Susan. Now he has caused harm to both women on a spiritual level. Neither know exactly what happened, yet both women can feel affected spiritually, or intuitively. both women, because of not really knowing for sure what happened, can be feeling confused. All are injured, even if they are not aware of their injury.

Bob in carrying this entire betrayal around with him. He is the knower of the dishonesty. His soul is affected, no amount of drugs or alcohol can hide the betrayal his soul feels. It may numb it for periods of time, but it can not heal it. Bob’s betrayal and dishonesty to him self and these woman may manifest itself in many ways. Anxiety, restlessness, insecurities within himself that are then masked by a whole slew of behaviors, the list can go on and on. Are you all still with me?

Now for Bob to begin to heal this betrayal, he must first see what has occurred. By seeing this, I mean he must come to understand it. To step back and look at it. Step four of the twelve steps has him begin to list it. The twelve steps is not the only self help program out there to work through this. There are many that will work just as well to help an addict take a look at their part in their own problems.

This seemingly small issue, that no one knows about, except BOB can cause many many issues for Bob right now if he allows it to slip by as “its no big deal”. For an addict, any lie, dishonest act, is a BIG DEAL no matter how seemingly normal it might appear.

Not only has Bob used Rhonda as an object. He is using Susan as an object as well, by fantasizing about her, without her knowledge of it. He is using her to gain pleasure sexually without her knowledge of it. He is acting for Rhonda, and lying to her, making her believe that she is bringing about his pleasure, when in fact, she is not. Bob is pretending Rhonda is Susan.

Bob, had to take a few drinks to calm his anxiety, to numb out his soul screaming, this is wrong. On some level his body is attempting to help guide Bob to doing the right thing here, by signalling something is not right with this for Bob. Yet Bob choose to ignore himself, and numb out his own knowledge about right and wrong. This is the addictive personality lying to Bob. Bob is betraying Bob!

Bob also lies to Rhonda, about his drinking. We all know that the twelve step program is a program of abstinence. Again the lying and dishonesty is clear. Many an alcoholic will only see this part of the betrayal. This is somehow more apparent to people. For a person to heal deeper, those places of betrayal that only involves thought, are less apparent. Yet all is equally important when attempting to heal oneself, and move into emotional sobriety.

Often we hear about the joy of living, yet many people in recovery never experience it. If you are a person in recovery who has not reached joy in your life, take a deeper look at your forth step. Does it contain and reveal places where you have betrayed yourself and others by dishonesty of the thought and mind? If not, take time to go back and truly uncover the mental manipulation and dishonesty. These are a doorway to gaining emotional sobriety and freedom from your addictive personality.